With stars in their eyes, students and community member’s gaze at the new art exhibit in the University of Wyoming Art Museum. Focusing on the beauty of our universe, the exhibit reflects another exhibit in the museum.
Jeff Lockwood, reflecting upon another exhibit called Starstruck, presented an Interstellar Message Composition.
Drawing from a writing workshop developed in collaboration with the NASA and the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Lockwood will lead participants through the exhibition and workshop.
“Viewers will be able to join him in engaging and answering questions that push the limits of human thought and creativity,” Wendy Bredehoft who helped organize the workshop, said.
The main focus of the workshop was to get people thinking about the possibility of extra-terrestrials and what questions help to provide a different view at our own world and culture in the process.
By looking at the activities, Lockwood challenged participants asking what would they say if they could send a message to extra terrestrials. To what questions would you ask, or how you would even describe the human experience to them, each one each having a few different twists from narrowing a page.
“I really loved hearing other people’s ways of summarizing the human race, it was interesting to hear the different perspective people took when answering that question,” Michael Kesy, an electrical engineering freshman said.
Not only did the workshop draw upon the imagination and thought process’s, but the variety of backgrounds of all those who attended.
“I think it was fun and I really enjoyed the background and age range [of the group]. I think it just makes things really enjoyable especially with that diversity. They are all human beings and all have a shared sense of this light and darkness within us,” Lockwood said.
“We have this sense that individuals have this incredible capacity for goodness. But, we also have this realization that we sometime manifest phenomenal evil. So it’s that kind of dynamic that makes us ultimately human,” Lockwood said.
This helped make each individuals answer unique and interesting to contemplate.
After a night of creative writing on the possibilities of other life in the Universe to self-reflection about our own world and culture, it was clear that the Interstellar Message Composition did inspire thought, imagination and a new way at looking at our world and possibly others.
